They Swim in Circles

Last summer, the lady who lived in the trailer home next door went a little crazy. And she let the place go. Didn’t take out her trash. And from what I saw when I glanced through her front window, she let all her half-eaten food deliveries pile up on the floor. That’s when the rats came. Infested her trailer. Bred and grew into giant rats. Hundreds of them. So many that they spread out into other trailer homes in the park, including mine. And so I called the park office.

That’s when things got really wild. I saw it all happen. The crazy lady was evicted, her rat trailer was razed, and a pit was dug. The park laid out chemical-laden bait for the giant rats, and they ate voraciously.

The rats ran in circles before diving into the pit.

I took a peek. Thousands of giant rats. Chemically mutated. Writhing en masse, like furry waves on a living lake. That was the end of summer. The park fitted the pit with a giant wooden lid. Then the autumn rains came, slicked the pit with mud, and drove the lid downward.

And now, this winter, there's only one explanation for what I see at the lake. The strong rats must’ve cannibalized the weak ones, and the most mutated burrowed through the ground to the lake and became aquarats. I know this because I see inverse ice circles on the lake, with an occasional nose bobbing at the surface…

The aquarats swim in circles under the frozen lake.